Author: Katie Heidel

A Country Divided Proposal

Austin Gouchenauer

Ryan Scott

Ruth George

Sam Hooker

Katie Heidel

Link to PowerPoint/Prototype:  http://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xfu3iflU-4edBkzKCsrVGXwKZu6P9PArsCQ4A5qyrWE/edit?ts=58503806#slide=id.p

Proposal

In recent years, the use of virtual reality (VR) has become more popular. The functionality and development of VR has increased as well, which has allowed a variety of ideas to be introduced regarding how to utilize this technology. Since many video games are developed with the intent to entertain and sell, implementing education in popular games is a way to affect a wide audience. Due to its similarity to the video game medium, VR can also provide educational experiences capable of reaching many people, which can change the way that we use educational games and videos. With VR, we can immerse the audience into a world that can teach new views and ideas in a way that traditional video games are unable to: it allows us to get visual, first-hand experience with lessons and skills that can make the whole process more fun and endurable. When VR is successful, it can reach a wide range of ages and demographics. Virtual Reality, like many video games, also allows someone to get the perspective of another person and learn his or her story. Each person has his or her own thoughts and morals when it comes to different situations; through a VR experience, we plan on showing differing political mindsets in order to help people understand the “other side” of their opinions.

Unlike most video games, where you see the point of view of an assassin or zombie hunter, our goal with VR is to show the different sides of political controversies. With our prototype, we plan on using a single issue to demonstrate our goal: to give the user a wider view of how individuals with opposing views think when it comes to politics and the issues that are associated with it. Many people know why they believe in their own morals and stances when it comes to issues, but they don’t know or understand the opposing side’s reasoning. Our purpose is to allow the user to see the differences of the opposing side first-hand, to put the user into the shoes of a person with opposing ideals. The user will be able to see the opposing side’s lifestyle and disposition so that he or she can better understand where the “other side” is coming from, which will hopefully lead to a respect for others’ beliefs. From this experience, the user will be able to see how others think, and they will be able to possibly relate to or understand why others think so differently. This will lead people to accept others and their moral beliefs. Through this experience, any user can learn to respect an opposing party.

Although this game is meant to be used by people aged 18 years and older—because 18 is the minimum voting age in America—the interface that the user sees is quite simple and easy to use. Whenever the user opens the game through the VR headset, he or she will begin with a simple Start button that he or she can focus crosshairs on to move into the experience. Now, to get the best experience it would be ideal for the user to experience the view that opposes his or hers. Also, to get more immersed in the game and experience it better, the whole simulation would be an animation, so that it can also be more interactive. So, the next screen shown will have two options: to the left will represent the Liberal viewpoint, and the right side will represent the Conservative viewpoint. The user would turn to look toward the side that the user feels he or she is more apart or supportive of. Next the screen would change to the user’s perspective as a member of a family sitting together at a meal. The characters would begin to speak and would eventually ask for the user’s response, where the user would be asked to choose from a selection of responses requesting that the user pick which fits best to his or her preferred response. The only catch, however, is that the game has put you in a family that is talking about the side opposite of what you chose before the experience began. This enables the user to experience up front the reasoning and thoughts of the opposing side. This interface is simple to navigate, which can make it easier for any user who is not accustomed to the VR experience.

With the experience being a prototype, we have decided to focus on a single issue, and in a real version there would be several issues in different scenarios. However, in the prototype we decided to focus on the issue of prayer in schools, a controversial topic among the two groups (“Republicans v. Democrats”). This experience is meant to be available to anyone, so it would be downloaded as an app on the users’ phones and then used with Google Cardboard or Samsung goggles. This will make this game easily accessible, just like many other games.

Originally, we had a broad subject, knowing that we wanted to focus on political ideals and beliefs. Later on, we thought it was better to pick specific issues to present the game. The full game was intended to include several issues to focus on so that there would be more content for the user to compare and explore.

Right now, due to the path of using Google Cardboard or Samsung goggles, the technology is limited to only the visual aspect with the ability to move one’s head and the camera at the same time. Many of the other VR headsets include hand controllers, and if the original is successful then the implementation of the controllers would be able to make the game more interactive by adding environmental aspects that can be moved, or by using the controllers to point and select from the choices of responses. Since the game would feature animation, it would be easier to change the content of the game. If we were to use a 360-degree camera to shoot images for the game, then it would be costlier and time consuming. In animation, characters and setting can be reused. Right now this game’s purpose is to put users in the shoes of people who have different political ideals, but in the future it could be used for more subjects that do not include politics, such as foreign cultures, various jobs, or other aspects of life that people do not normally know or completely understand.

Through this game, after years of it being easily available, then hopefully the next generation of voters and politicians will be able to get along better. Today’s politics are filled with unnecessary arguing and no compromise. This game can help the future by enabling people to respect and understand those who they don’t agree with at all. This can help bring people together, allow more political laws and bills to be accepted, and also unite a country that at this point in time is separated through political parties.

 

Integrity Statement: We pledge on our honor that we have neither given nor received unauthorized assistance on this assignment/exam.

Works Cited

Mortara, Michela, et al. “Learning Cultural Heritage by Serious Games.” Science Direct. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

Mutz, Diana C. “The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 46, no. 4, 2002, pp. 838–855. www.jstor.org/stable/3088437

Personalizing Politics: A Congruency Model of Political Preference. Caprara, Gian Vittorio; Zimbardo, Philip G. American Psychologist, Vol 59(7), Oct 2004, 581-594. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.59.7.581

“Republicans v. Democrats.” Republicans v. Democrats. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

 Jackson, John S. The American Political Party System : Continuity And Change Over Ten Presidential Elections. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2014. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

Embodied Virtuality

Embodied virtuality is a topic that Katherine Hayles explored most thoroughly in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Such a concept is quite difficult to grasp even with Hayles’ explanations, but thankfully there are examples in media that can accurately represent the concept. In the show Black Mirror, the character of Ash in the episode “Be Right Back” can have the concept of embodied virtuality applied to him given his circumstances. Another example of this embodied virtuality can be found in the 1975 film based on the novel of the same name, The Stepford Wives, by observing the “wives” of the town of Stepford. Ash and the wives from Stepford represent embodied virtuality in that they are artificially created humans made for the purpose of “serving,” if you will, other humans; more specifically, both are made to fulfill the needs of a significant other, a universal need that applies to both genders.

In the episode “Be Right Back” from the show Black Mirror, one of the two main characters introduced, Ash, dies from an accident, leaving his girlfriend Martha alone to mourn him. Due to an acquaintance’s recommendation, Martha discovers a program that uses the information found online about Ash from his social media accounts to reconstruct his consciousness by recreating his personality. Eventually, it escalates to “Ash” getting a body and living with Martha, but she soon realizes that it will never truly be Ash and basically banishes him to the attic from then on. This version of Ash provides a strong example of what embodied virtuality is and could possibly become. Hayles herself gave a more relatable and simplistic example of the concept of virtuality, describing it as like playing a virtual game of ping-pong: “[T]he game takes place partly in real life (RL) and partly in virtual reality (VR)” (14). Just like this half-real/half-online game of ping-pong, Ash exists partly in real life and partly in virtual reality. While the simulation of Ash was able to return as a tangible entity that reacts to real-life people and stimuli, he still exists as a product of the internet and virtual reality, as his personality is just a simulation of what the program was able to gather about him from what he put out on the internet. Since he is literally embodied but still quite virtual, existing both in real life and in virtual reality, Ash is a prime example of the concept of embodied virtuality that Hayles proposed.

Looking at it from another perspective, Hayles’ concept of embodied virtuality can also be seen in examples in The Stepford Wives. In the movie, the town of Stepford seems to be an old fashioned town full of bland women who take on the roles of being the perfect housewives with little interest outside of that. The protagonist Joanna eventually discovers that the men of Stepford have recreated their wives as perfect robots and have killed their old wives in favor of these so-called improved and ideal versions. The situation of the wives from Stepford is quite similar to Ash’s: they are not real humans, but they are made to look and act like them (although an argument can be made the the Stepford robot wives acted less than human). The wives are the embodiment of a simulation of subjectively “perfect” wives, but they are embodied in real life and can react to the whims of their husbands. Hayles commented on embodied virtuality in a way applicable to this situation, saying, “[O]ne way to construct virtuality is . . . as a metanarrative about the transformation of the human into a disembodied posthuman” (22). In a way, the wives have come close to being “disembodied posthumans,” as they are not quite humans but machines that resemble them. Granted, the wives lacked a remote sense of consciousness and individual wills not directly imposed onto them, so the posthuman Hayles imagined likely would have more of a balance. Overall, though, the Stepford wives are a grim portrayal of embodied virtuality, one that hopefully will not ever come to be in the real world

Something interesting found when comparing Ash’s situation in Black Mirror to the wives’ situation in The Stepford Wives is that both situations occurred as a result of their significant others’ desires. For Ash, his lover Martha missed him and desperately wanted to see him and be with him again, so she resorted to having the virtual embodiment of Ash created for the purpose of fulfilling her needs for him and his company. In contrast to Martha’s more genuine desires, the men in Stepford created the robot “improvements” of their wives in order to have what they believed were the perfect women to fulfill their needs sexually, emotionally, socially, and domestically. These similarities in the motives for creating the virtual embodiments of their significant others lay in their romantic and sexual desires, and this offers an interesting commentary on what humanity values. These two examples place an emphasis on recreating a significant other that is gone—or will be gone in the case of The Stepford Wives—in an effort to have them near, whether for a genuine reason or a selfish reason. One could make a comparison of genders by relating the men’s selfish and twisted use of embodied virtuality in The Stepford Wives to a masculine desire to control females, but this would be a severe generalization that would be virtually impossible to prove and is quite likely untrue. So the only conclusion that can be accepted is that, in the realm of romantic and sexual relations to humans, people from both genders may be willing to dabble in the virtual in order to attain an embodiment of what once was or what could be.

Comparing Ash in “Be Right Back” from Black Mirrors and the wives from The Stepford Wives would probably take a novel itself to cover, but there certainly are similarities between the two in regards to embodied virtuality. Using the unique situations of Ash and the Stepford wives provides an accurate and interesting understanding of Katherine Hayles’ concept of embodied virtuality; the concept can more easily be grasped by studying these situations, and hopefully humans can take the lessons learned in the cases of Ash and the Stepford wives as a warning to make clear the distinction between man and machine—it’s becoming quite a hard distinction to make, after all.

Works Cited

Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. The University of Chicago Press. 1999.

Black Mirror: Ash and Embodied Virtuality

How does the concept of “Embodied Virtuality”  apply to Ash, the main character of this episode?

Embodied virtuality is a topic that Katherine Hayles explored most thoroughly in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Such a concept is quite difficult to grasp even with Hayles’ explanations, but thankfully there are examples in media that can accurately represent the concept. In the show Black Mirror, the character of Ash in episode one of season two can have the concept of embodied virtuality applied to him given his circumstances. Hayles explained on page 14 of her book that playing a ping pong game online is an example of virtuality, as the game is played partially online and partially in real life by the person. Ash is this virtuality embodied. He is not literally Ash himself but a computer simulation of him made up of data found online; however, he is embodied in real life in a tangible form that interacts with humans for their pleasure, thus showing his virtuality. Ash is a great example of embodied virtuality, and his circumstances definitely fall in line with what Hayles described in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.

Artificially Influenced

To be human is to be a myriad of different things. Different people will provide different answers when posed with the question “What does it mean to be human?” Some may speculate that to be human is to experience love in all its forms. Others may say it is human to create and to dream. While answers like those are all well and pleasant, some realities may not be all that heartwarming. It can also be argued that to be human is to lie; to be human is to hurt. No matter the definition given, here I will provide my perspective on a trait exclusive to the human race, something that, from my observation, is a defining trait of the average individual: humans are easily manipulated. Be it by means of media, shopping trends, or religious movements, manipulating a human into giving up his or her logic isn’t so difficult at all.

Before I get into the thick of it, I want to introduce a certain novel that I will be referencing quite often, as it illustrates my claims quite excellently. Subjectively one of the best explorations of a post-apocalyptic future in store for earth, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep provides a fantastic study of the concept of humanity. In this alternate future, Earth has been ravaged by war and has become almost uninhabitable, so the majority of humans have escaped to Mars and other colonies in space. Very few humans have remained on Earth, including the novel’s protagonist, Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids. The entire story takes place over the course of a day, where Deckard hunts some escaped androids and faces the pressing questions regarding the humanity of cyborgs and the morality of humans. While the novel is chock full of fantastic messages and interesting food for thought, it shines in its exploration of humanity relative to these hypothetical androids.

Seeing as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? covers many aspects of humanity, it more than addresses humans’ shortcomings in the realm of allowing other humans to manipulate them. Utilizing the literary tool of hyperbole, the novel uses its exaggerated potential future for mankind to paint a picture of humans as unknowing slaves to various “systems,” if you will, set up by various third parties. The most obvious example of this manipulation of the humans in the novel that is extremely relatable to our society today lies in the influence of Buster Friendly, the world’s most popular and well-received T.V. personality. Basically, Buster serves as a talk show host of his very own talk show “Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends,” a program that airs constantly on T.V. that just about everyone watches religiously. One character in the novel even claimed, “I watch [Buster] every morning and then at night when I get home; I watch him while I’m eating dinner and then his late late show until I go to bed” (Dick 63). Throughout the novel, Buster Friendly and his friends are ever present, building up hype for his important expose that he’d been working on for years and reporting on current events in the universe. Buster Friendly’s news is important to people; whatever Buster says, his dedicated viewers are sure to accept and believe, as he is their primary source of entertainment and news. When a T.V. personality gains a dedicated following, people tend to idolize them, which leads to the conclusion that these personalities can convince people to believe whatever they tell them. In our society today, there are numerous T.V. personalities with strong supporters who will believe just about anything the personalities tell them. Celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah, Jimmy Fallon, Bill O’Reilly, etc. likely come to mind. When people are put in a position of authority over others, they can easily sway the masses who support them in their favor; there’s a reason the fans of these celebrities scream and cheer when they’re in the audiences of the various shows. For example, multiple celebrities have taken their picks for the upcoming presidential election: personalities and celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Julianne Moore, and Morgan Freeman endorse and encourage votes for Hillary Clinton, while Kirstie Alley, Gary Busey, and Hulk Hogan have voiced support for Donald Trump. With the amount of influence these celebrities possess, they can significantly affect the results of the election by encouraging their fans to vote for their preferred candidate; they make a point of sharing their opinion on a candidate with the goal of influencing their followers in their favor. Just like how Buster Friendly convinced almost the entirety of humans to watch and enjoy his show and news, T.V. personalities today can sway the masses. Humans are easily manipulated into following and supporting these idols of theirs merely because those personalities are their offering them something to watch and support.

It’s not just T.V. personalities that can serve to manipulate humans, however—humans can also be easily swayed by group movements, such as religious trends and social movements. When groups of people band together, there grows a sort of mob mentality that people become willingly a part of because they’re participating in the group; they want to be accepted and included, so they become a part of a group without possibly questioning why. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? this group is a new religion called “Mercerism.” This religion, whose figurehead is named Wilbur Mercer, encourages the sanctity of all life and a sort of oneness with everyone who uses their Penfield empathy boxes to take the “climb with Mercer.” This climb, called “fusion,” is a simulated climbing experience each person feels when using their box; they feel that they are climbing a mountain with Mercer himself and various other followers of him, feeling the same pain as each other and taking the journey together. Iran, the wife of the main character Rick Deckard, describes the experience as such: “And I remember thinking how much better off we are . . . when we’re with Mercer. Despite the pain. Physical pain but spiritually together; I felt everyone else, all over the world, all who had fused at the same time” (Dick 173). The appeal of this religion seems to be the togetherness everyone feels; they will endure the pain of fusion because they are happy to be experiencing it together. This is characteristic of numerous religions and modern movements; people may do irrational things for the sake of their religion or movement but do so willingly because they are happy to be part of a group. If a group or religion were to be corrupt, as some are, people can easily be manipulated into doing things they normally wouldn’t do.

Another method of manipulation humans can easily relate to within our society today is the desire to have what everyone else has, to be caught up on the most recent trends. This one undoubtedly hits home as something just about every human can relate to; try watching commercials on television and not wanting something they’ve advertised to you. This is tricky to do, because once an advertisement has put the idea in our heads that some cool new product is all the rage among our peers, we suddenly want it. If everyone starts buying a new drink at Starbucks and posting on social media about it, suddenly we feel inclined to try it and do the same. For us today these desires can range anywhere from clothes to food; in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? there was a more universally desired item to acquire: a real, live animal to keep and care for. The average citizen was more socially accepted if he or she had an animal, preferably a rare one or multiple, to have as his or her pet. This pet couldn’t be a fake robotic creature; it had to be a living, breathing animal for it to be socially acceptable: “[Rick] wished to god he had a horse, in fact any animal. Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of greatly demoralizing one. And yet from a social standpoint it had to be done, given the absence of the real article” (Dick 9). Socially speaking, in Dick’s version of the future, owning a living animal was the way to social acceptance. In our society, owning whatever is trendy and “in” at the moment whether we actually want it or not is the way to social acceptance. When seeking to manipulate humans, those with malicious intent target the desires of people to have what others have to feel like they are all part of a group. Marketing an item by claiming everyone has it is a clever way to trick someone into purchasing that which they wouldn’t normally consider buying. Humans can easily be convinced (i.e. manipulated) into participating in certain trends merely because everyone else is participating in them, yet another of the numerous examples of how humans effortlessly fall prey to manipulation.

Of these examples from both our society and Dick’s novels, there is a commonality with all of these manipulative means that answers the nagging question “Why do such things serve to so perfectly manipulate humans?” To answer this, we have to explore the concept of empathy, another trait uniquely attributed to humans. “Empathy” is defined as “The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner” (Merriam-Webster). In other words, one can empathize with someone else by understanding him or her and his or her experiences and emotions; it’s how people relate to each other and find commonalities on a human level. So how does empathy relate to how humans are manipulated by others? Empathy is inherently a social concept. To feel empathy, there must be two parties involved. This itself is a very human trait, as psychology professor Keith Oatley explains, “The most important characteristic of being human is that our lives are social. What’s distinctive about humans is that we make social arrangements with other people, with friends, with lovers, with children, that aren’t pre-programmed by instinct” (“Reading books and watching films makes you kinder in real life”). Given that humans are social creatures striving to connect with and empathize with each other, it is no surprise that humans can be manipulated under the pretense of being social with fellow humans. Someone may feel connected to Ellen DeGeneres when watching her show to the point where he or she emulates Ellen as an idol and lets Ellen dictate his or her decisions, as radical as that sounds. Another person may join a new religious cult out of a desire to feel a part of something with fellow humans but commit heinous acts as part of the cult’s rituals. Yet another person might waste money and go into debt purchasing expensive clothing because those clothes are popular and trendy according to this person’s friends on social media. All of these examples stem from a desire to empathize with other people, but when these means of community have manipulative natures, people will fall prey to these ploys without stopping to think about the possibly harmful consequences.

Although manipulation is easily integrated into these situations, that doesn’t mean participating in all of these actions is inherently wrong or damaging. T.V. personalities are not always out to manipulate the crowds; not every group requires wrongdoing and harmful actions; and sometimes keeping up with trends is harmless fun. My touching upon this flaw of humanity is not to condemn humans for being too “mainstream” with society but to encourage critical thinking on top of attempts to empathize with fellow human beings. As hard as it is to accept, not everything is beneficial and good for people. There are terrible people in the world with ulterior motives, and they can use their manipulative tricks to sway innocent people just wanting to connect with other people. When people fall prey to these trappings, genuine relationships and empathy are dead in favor of manipulation and false appearances. Clinical psychologist Arthur P. Ciaramicoli accurately comments on our society’s viewpoint on the matter by claiming, “I think we have become a society where we rate status over relationships. We relate image over character and when you do that, you place much less emphasis on the skill or the ability of empathy” (“Empathizing 101“). When humans are manipulated into accepting a viewpoint or blindly joining a group, it becomes more about status and image, as Ciaramicoli stated, than about genuine connections. This is not true empathy; status, especially among peers, does not achieve empathy, as manipulators strive to make people craving empathetic connections with others believe. If status is viewed as more important than empathy, less people will empathize with each other in favor of their social standing, whether they realize they are distancing themselves from others or not. The solution is not to never attempt to empathize with others—the solution is to be aware at all times, to put morality and genuine connections above appearances of being part of a collective group. So the next time a T.V. personality attempts to sway you to his or her side, an exclusive group tempts you into joining in, or a new trend beckons you to participate, think carefully about what you’re getting into. Compare your situation to the various instances I mentioned from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Finally, consider your desire for connections with others. Will you truly achieve empathy by risking letting certain groups/personalities/trends control you? Think critically, stick to your beliefs, and don’t be afraid to connect with others—just keep an eye out for those who seek to manipulate your good intentions.

Works Cited

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968. The Random House Publishing Group, 1996.

“empathy.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2016. Web. 2 Oct. 2016.

Grasgreen, Allie. “Empathizing 101.” Inside Higher Ed, 24 Nov. 2010, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/24/empathy. Accessed 2 Oct. 2016

Surugue, Léa. “Reading books and watching films makes you kinder in real life.” International Business Times, 19 July 2016, https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reading-books-watching-films-makes-you-kinder-real-life-1571434#annotations:_MOsQlpyEeaiesf9ed4wVw. Accessed 2 Oct. 2016.

 

 

 

Empathy—Or Lack Thereof?

In his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick invites readers into a post-apocalyptic version of Earth where very few humans remain in favor of colonizing on Mars and other planets. On this desolate planet, bounty hunters like Rick Deckard make a living off catching escaped androids that made their way to the planet. To test whether or not these realistically built androids are not human, Rick administers a test called the “Voigt-Kampff” scale, which basically measures the person’s—or cyborg’s—reaction to provocative questions and statements, i.e. testing for the empathy that only a human is capable of possessing.

This scale is put to the test when Rick meets with members of the android-developing Rosen Association: Eldon Rosen and his niece, Rachael Rosen. The duo tries to prove to Rick that his scale is not accurate by having him use it against Rachael, whose reactions garner unusual results by the system, since “[t]he gauges, however, did not respond. Formally, a correct response. But simulated” (Dick 50). While Rachael’s results classify her as an android, the Rosens insist to Rick that she is a human whose unique circumstances growing up negatively altered her empathetic reactions. Rick, however, tries one last test, and the results give him his desired outcome: “He saw the two dial indicators gyrate frantically. But only after a pause. The reaction had come, but too late” (Dick 59). Rachael is confirmed an android and not, in fact, an empathy-lacking human.

This encounter poses the hypothetical question: Would it be morally wrong for someone—a human—from our society today to fail this specific empathy test? While in Dick’s world the Voigt-Kampff tests for androids, would failing this test in our android-free world make someone less than human?